A pregnant woman is dead after officials say she crashed a vehicle into a Sturbridge, Massachusetts, hotel Thursday and fired several shots into the building, injuring a guest.
Police responded just before 1 a.m. to the Sturbridge Plaza Hotel at 400 Haynes St.
Video from the scene showed a vehicle that crashed into the side of the building. A white sheet was seen hanging inside a first-floor hallway surrounded by yellow police tape.
“Preliminary investigation of this case indicates that the suspect drove to the hotel in an attempt to find two people that they knew,” Worcester County District Attorney Joe Early said on Thursday afternoon.
A hotel guest said he was staying in a room directly above the room where the incident happened. He described seeing a woman get out of the crashed car and start shooting.
“She jumped out and was shouting, ‘Where are you, where are you?’ and then shot three times quickly into the – it seemed like into the – hotel room. And then I heard smashing glass, and I think she maybe climbed into the room,” witness Stuart Mackelvie said.
The general manager of the hotel said the woman who was driving the vehicle was not a registered guest.
Early said the shooting victim was not one of the people that investigators believe the woman was targeting. The victim, whose condition was described as “critical but stable,” was initially taken to Harrington Hospital and then flown to UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester.
During the emergency response, three Sturbridge police officers and a Massachusetts State Police trooper made contact with the woman. Early said they tried to talk with her before she shot herself. Livesaving measures were unsuccessful, and the DA said that officials later learned she was pregnant.
“This case is very complicated, and we won’t be able to talk about many aspects of the case due to our domestic violence statute laws,” Early said.
“Because this incident unfolded so quickly, the town of Sturbridge was never in any danger. We identified this. We responded within about five minutes, and in the whole incident was over within about ten minutes,” Sturbridge Police Chief Earl Dessert said.
Officials said the investigation is ongoing.
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